CARRIE LYELL AND DANIELLE MUSTARDE TAKE TO THE WATER WITH LGBTQIINCLUSFIVE ROWING TEAM, THE LONDON OTTERS

PHOTOS SIMON BELL

When DIVA was invited to a taster session with London Otters, an LGBTQI- inclusive rowing club, intrepid and buccaneering babes Carrie and Danielle jumped at the chance. That was before this rudderless pair realised quite what they’d let themselves in fo… ar. For. Oar. Get it? It’s a pun. Oh, never mind…

9.15

CARRIE: It’s Saturday, and far too early to be up and at ‘em, but I’m on the DLR, trundling along to the Royal Docks to meet the London Otters for a sesh on the water. There’s a tiny voice in my head wondering what on earth we’ve let ourselves in for but, on the whole, I’m feeling pretty chill about it. I’ve been on a rowing machine in the gym. I’ve rowed a boat around a lake without capsizing. I’ve even watched the Oxford-Cambridge boat race once or twice. How hard can this really be? But walking along the water to the regatta centre, watching actual rowers do their thing, that voice gets a little louder. What have we done?

9.30

DANIELLE: My morning is not off to a good start… Having woken up royally on the wrong side of the bed, to top things off, just as my Uber drfiver drops me at the docks, he slowly – but surely, and deliberately, it seems – runs over one half of a pair of definitely married ducks. I take this to be a bad omen. Especially given that they’re water-based creatures.

CARRIE: Dead ducks. And now hailstones. What next? Death at sea? I’m a strong swimmer but I don’t fancy my chances on this chilly April morning. Thankfully, the lovely Otters captain Matt Davey and PR guru José Cantarero reassure us that our crew will take very good care of us out on the water, and tell us it is exceptionally difficult to capsize a boat with eight people in it. So that’s a bit of a relief. Time to hit the erg (that’s a rowing machine, to you and me).